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Spenser  and   Utopia 


BY 

MEEEITT  Y.  HUGHES 


[Keprinted  from  Studies  in  Philology,  xvii,  2,  April,  1920.] 


SPENSEK   AND    UTOPIA 
BY  MEERITT  Y.  HUGHES 

The  search  for  democratic  foregleams  in  the  Elizabethan  poets 
has  its  allurements  for  those  whose  confidence  in  contemporary 
socialism  and  whose  pleasure  in  the  classics  need  mutual  support. 
Mr.  Albert  H.  Tolman  studied  Shakspere  from  this  angle  in  an 
article  published  just  before  the  War  and  found  that  the  author  of 
Coriolanus,  "  If  not  the  John  the  Baptist  of  democracy,  was  at 
least  one  of  its  prophets."  x  More  recently  Mr.  Herbert  Cory,  in 
Edmund  Spenser,  a  Critical  Study,  has  pointed  to  the  poet's  use  of 
St.  George,  a  son  of  the  soil  or  "  male  Cinderella/'  as  evidence  that 
he  shared  the  English  love  for  champions  sprung  of  the  people 
and  belonged  to  the  line  of  story-tellers  who  have  given  us  Beo- 
wulf, Gareth,  and  Tom  Jones.  There  are  several  ways  in  which  a 
literature  can  be  democratic.  In  bringing  stalwarts  like  Sir  Sa- 
tyrane  and  Falconbridge  onto  their  pages  Spenser  and  Shakspere 
were  democrats,  just  as  Ascham  and  Sir  Thomas  Elyot  were  demo- 
crats in  enjoining  archery  as  the  most  "commodious"  exercise 
for  young  noblemen,  but  the  poets  would  be  surprised  to  find  them- 
selves classed  in  a  line  of  prophets  of  which,  presumably,  Walt 
Whitman  is  the  John  Baptist  if  not  the  Messias.  The  Eed  Cross 
Knight,  as  Mr.  Cory  tells  us,  relates  the  Faerie  Queene  to  one  of 
the  enduringly  popular  elements  in  English  poetry,  but  he  also 
relates  it  to  the  spirit  of  a  class  not  yet  extinct  in  England  which 
finds  its  play  in  riding  to  hounds  and  its  earnest  in  voting  the 
Conservative  ticket.  St.  George's  kinship  with  those  jolly  hunts- 
men is  much  less  shadowy  than  his  relation  to  the  masses  who  are 
putting  their  sport  into  jeopardy  in  England. 

Wiser  and  manlier  than  these  efforts  to  find  crumbs  of  the  leaven 
of  twentieth-century  democracy  in  the  Elizabethans  is  the  revolt  of 
Walt  Whitman  against  the  feudalism  of  Shakspere,  and  of  Keats 
against  Spenser's  uncompromising  contempt  for  the  mob  in  the 
passage  of  Book  V  in  which  the  present  article  is  interested.  Whit- 

1  Publications  of  the  Modern  Language  Association,  xxix,  pp.  277  sq. 
132 


Merritt  Y.  Hughes  133 

man  knows  how  irreconcilable  is  the  war  between  him  and  his 
great  predecessors,  both  in  politics  and  art,  and  he  declares  it: 

The  great  poems,  Shakspere  included,  are  poisonous  to  the  idea  of  the 
pride  and  dignity  of  the  common  people,  the  life-blood  of  democracy. 
Shakspere  seems  to  me  of  astral  genius,  first-class,  entirely  fit  for  feudal- 
ism— there  is  much  in  him  ever  offensive  to  democracy.  He  is  not  only  the 
tally  of  feudalism,  but  I  should  say  that  Shakspere  is  incarnated,  uncom- 
promising feudalism  in  Literature, — the  democratic  requirements  are  not 
only  not  fulfilled  in  the  Shaksperian  productions,  but  are  insulted  on  every 
page.3 

Keats,  in  a  moment  when  his  loyalty  to  Spenser  wavered,  threw  in 
his  lot  with  the  wordy  giant  whom  Talus  overturned  and  rejoiced  in 
the  day  when  he  had  clothed  himself  in  the  name  and  power  of 
Topography  and  could  defy  his  enemies.  Hazlitt  threw  down  the 
gauntlet  to  Shakspere's  aristocratic  prejudices  and  in  doing  so  he 
pointed  out  a  cleft  between  the  sixteenth  century  and  the  nineteenth 
which  it  is  probably  more  useful  to  explore  than  to  cover  over. 

The  sixteenth  century  had  its  democracy,  but  it  was  not  of  our 
kind.  It  was  more  thoroughgoing  than  ours.  It  recognized  that 
men  are  all  subject  to  the  law  of  their  nature  and  consequently  owe 
each  other  a  certain  mutual  respect  which  transcends  all  differences 
of  rank.  Spenser  has  plenty  of  glimpses  of  the  humor  and  wisdom 
of  this  kind  of  democracy  even  in  his  aristocratic  Faerie  Queene. 
In  Book  III,  Canto  xi, 

Kings,  queenes,  lords,  ladies,  knights,  and  damsels  gent 

Are  heaped  together  with  the  vulgar  sort 

And  mingled  with  the  raskall  rabblement, 

Without  respect  of  person  or  of  port, 

To  show  Dan  Cupid's  power  and  great  effort. 

The  sixteenth  century  never  lost  sight  of  the  common  destiny  of 
men,  nor  failed  to  recognize  the  obligation 

...  to  love  our  brethren  that  were  made 

Of  that  selfe  mould  and  that  selfe  Maker's  hand, 

That  we,  and  to  that  same  again  shall  fade, 

Where  they  shall  have  like  heritage  of  land, 

However  here  on  higher  steps  we  stand, 

Which  also  were  with  selfe  same  price  redeemed 

That  we,  however  of  us  light  esteemed.8 


a  Quoted  by  Mr.  Tolman,  ibid.,  pp.  280-281. 
8  Hymne  of  Heavenly  Love,  11.  198-204. 


676495 


134  Spenser  and  Utopia 

The  political  and  religious  ideas  of  the  Eenaissance  fixed  a  gulf 
between  gentlemen  and  commons  and  denied  the  latter  a  share  in 
the  management  of  the  society  of  which  they  were  a  part  and  for- 
bade them  to  try  or  even  to  wish  to  better  their  state.  Over  against 
these  restrictions  it  put  a  code  of  corresponding  obligations  upon 
the  rulers.  There  was  one  law  for  people  and  another  for  king  and 
nobles,  but  both  were  brought  under  the  higher  laws,  political  and 
religious,  which  were  embodied  in  the  ideas  of  the  Commonwealth 
and  the  Church.  To  those  laws  all  were  alike  slaves.  "And  say 
not  you  Princes,"  says  North  in  his  translation  of  Guevara,  echoing 
the  opinion  of  all  Europe,  "  for  that  you  are  puyssant  Princes,  that 
you  are  excepted  of  servitude  of  menne.  For  without  doubt  it  is 
a  thynge  more  untollerable,  to  have  their  hearts  burdened  with 
thoughts  than  their  necks  with  yrons."  *  The  noblesse  were  no  less 
servants  to  the  Commonwealth  than  the  tradesmen  whom  the  24th 
Chapter  of  the  laws  of  Henry  VIII  condemned  "  as  more  regarding 
their  own  singular  lucre  and  profit  than  the  commonweal  of  the 
realm,"  or  than  the  "  sturdy  vagabonds "  condemned  to  "  suffer 
pains  and  execution  of  death,  as  a  felon  and  as  an  enemy  of  the 
commonwealth."  5  In  the  conception  of  the  Commonwealth  and 
of  the  Church,  while  they  were  living  realities,  there  was  a  level- 
ling principle  more  profound  and  quite  as  strong  in  its  appeal  to 
the  popular  imagination  as  there  is  in  the  Marxian  creed.  It  is  to 
these  elements  in  Spenser  and  his  contemporaries  that  we  should 
turn  for  evidence  of  a  democratic  spirit  rather  than  to  passages 
where  there  is  a  fancied  Tolstoian  sympathy  for  laborers  and 
simple  men. 

In  the  scene  between  Artegall,  Talus,  and  the  Giant  in  Book  V 
of  the  Faerie  Queene  (Canto  ii,  stanzas  29-54),  Spenser  expressed 
the  sixteenth  century's  sense  of  the  separation  of  the  classes  and 
summed  up  the  bitterness  of  the  more  than  fifty  years  of  struggle 
into  which  the  religious  and  industrial  changes  of  the  time  had 
thrown  them,  both  in  England  and  on  the  Continent.  The  poetry 
reaches  one  of  its  lowest  levels  in  this  passage  and  Spenser's  opinions 
are  nowhere  more  disappointing.  Consequently  most  critics  pass  it 
hastily  with  a  murmured  apology.  Miss  Lillian  Winstanley  is 
almost  alone  in  pausing  over  the  passage,  and  she  does  so  to  excuse 

4  North's  Diall  of  Princes,  Bk.  I,  Cap.  29,  Fol.  44. 
B24  of  Henry  VIII,  re-enacted  under  Elizabeth. 


Merritt  Y.  Hughes  135 

or  explain  Spenser  in  the  light  of  his  Calvinistic  theology.  She 
writes : 

This  same  kind  of  (Calvinistic)  fatalism  is  the  argument  which  Spenser 
brings  against  communism.  Artegall  meets  a  giant  who  wishes  to  level 
all  things,  and  to  distribute  the  goods  of  rich  men  among  the  poor.  The 
knight  .  .  .  argues,  not  that  such  a  course  of  procedure  would  be  bad,  but 
that  the  existing  state  of  things  is  ordained  and  must  not  be  tampered 
with.  All  things  live  and  die  as  God  has  willed.  He  sets  kings  in 
sovereignty  and  he  makes  their  subjects  obey  them;  whatever  is  done  is 
done  by  him;  no  one  can  withstand  his  will;  what  seems  unjust  cannot  be 
called  to  account,  for  his  counsel  is  past  understanding.6 

Spenser's  Calvinism  alone  is  but  a  fragment  of  the  explanation  for 
the  stanza  which  Miss  Winstanley  paraphrases  and  for  the  arch 
of  ideas  of  which  it  is  the  keystone.  Spenser's  Calvinism  is  no 
more  responsible  for  this  canto  than  it  is  for  the  pageant  of  the 
Seven  Deadly  sins.  Both  passages  were  written  consciously  in  the 
light  of  a  host  of  earlier  treatments  of  the  same  subject  and  in 
both  Spenser  spoke  as  the  mouthpiece  rather  than  the  critic  of 
the  past.  Catholic  literature  is  as  full  of  the  divine  right  and 
necessity  of  the  political  order  as  the  works  of  the  reformers,  and 
North's  translation  of  the  Bishop  of  Guevara's  handbook  of  politics 
(translated  from  the  French  and  published  first  in  London  in 
1557)  furnished  later  writers  not  only  with  much  of  their  thought 
but  with  the  conventional  language  and  illustrations  in  which  to 
clothe  it.  The  Diall  of  Princes  probably  contributed  as  much  or 
more  than  any  other  single  source  to  the  canto  in  which  we  are 
interested.  North  wrote: 

When  the  Creator  created  the  whole  world,  he  gave  to  eche  thing  imme- 
diately his  place;  that  is  to  wete,  he  placed  intelligence,  in  the  uppermost 
heaven;  he  placed  the  starres,  in  the  firmament;  the  pianettes,  in  the 
orbes;  the  byrdes,  in  the  ayre;  the  erthe,  on  the  center;  the  fyshes,  in  the 
water ;  the  serpentes,  in  the  holes :  the  beastes,  in  the  mountaines :  and  al 
in  generality  he  gave  place  to  rest  themselves  in. 

The  passage  suggests  interesting  neo-Platonic  fictions  woven  into 
the  traditional  theological  argument,  and  perhaps  suggests  why 
Spenser  gives  so  much  space  in  the  context  to  his  fine-spun  reason- 
ing, borrowed  seemingly  from  "The  Statesman,"  to  prove  that 
physical  and  human  standards  cannot  be  applied  to  the  ordering 
of  the  commonwealth.  If  Nbrth  was  not  responsible  for  Spenser's 

•  Modern  Language  Quarterly,  m  (1900),  p.  11. 


136  Spenser  and  Utopia 

marriage  of  Heathen  philosophy  and  Christian  theology  in  this 
canto,  his  connection  with  the  language  and  thought  of  the  passage 
is  indisputable,  and  the  connection  is  much  readier  than  that  with 
the  Calvinistic  dogmas  learned  in  Cambridge  days. 

They  live,  they  die,  like  as  he  doth  ordaine, 

Ne  ever  any  asketh  reason  why. 

The  hils  doe  not  the  lowly  dales  disdaine; 

The  dales  doe  not  the  lofty  hills  envy. 

He  maketh  kings  to  sit  in  sovereignty; 

He  maketh  subjects  to  their  power  obey; 

He  pulleth  downe,  he  setteth  up  on  hy; 

He  gives  to  this,  from  that  he  takes  away: 

For  all  we  have  is  his :  what  he  list  doe,  he  may. 

For  the  true  Calvinistic  ring  in  this  argument  we  must  turn  to 
old  Sir  John  Cheke,  who  echoed  it  in  his  pamphlet  against  Kefs 
rebellion,  written  about  1550  and  preserved  in  Holinshed  (Vol. 
m,  p.  1043) .  Here  we  meet  not  the  submission  to  God's  will  of  the 
Catholic  Church  of  the  Middle  Ages,  but  the  Protestant  zeal  for 
the  glory  of  God.  Cheke's  most  significant  sentence  is  this : 

God  hath  made  the  poore,  and  he  hath  made  him  to  be  poore  that  he 
might  show  his  might:  and  set  them  aloft  when  he  listeth,  for  such  cause 
as  to  him  seemeth,  and  pluck  downe  the  rich  to  this  state  of  povertie,  as  he 
disposeth  to  order  them. 

In  writing  so,  Edward  VI's  tutor  was,  like  Spenser,  expressing 
ideas  inherited  from  the  past  and  embodying  the  conviction  of  the 
time,  but,  unlike  Spenser,  he  was  warping  them  into  a  narrow  theo- 
logical form.  Behind  both  men  was  a  long  series  of  writers,  both 
Catholic  and  Protestant,  who  had  built  up  the  conception  of  the 
state  consisting  of  divinely  sanctioned  degrees  shading  from  mon- 
arch to  churl  which  was  the  political  faith  of  the  century.  Elyot's 
Booke  of  the  Governour  is  founded  on  the  idea,  and  every  poli- 
tical writer  of  the  century  expresses  it.  John  Tyndall's  Boole  of 
the  Obedience  of  a  Christian  Man  enunciated  it  in  the  first  quarter 
of  the  century,  and,  if  the  chronicler  is  to  be  believed,  won  thereby 
the  consent  of  Henry  VIII  that  it  should  be  taken  off  the  index 
of  heretical  works.  Even  the  leaders  of  the  rebels  in  the  Peasants' 
War  did  not  dream  of  challenging  the  charmed  principle  of  degree 
and  authority,7  and  it  was  only  the  most  extreme  of  the  dema- 

7 "  The  Peasants'  War,"  Belfort  Bax,  London,  1899,  p.  65,  sg. 


Merritt  Y.  Hughes  137 

gogues  who  appeared  in  England  under  the  Protector  Somerset 
who  dared  defy  it,  and  they  were  always  careful  to  "  save  the 
King's  Majesty."  It  was  never  quite  lost  sight  of  in  the  social 
upheavals  of  the  Keformation,  either  in  Germany  or  England. 

Perhaps  the  most  typical  form  of  the  argument  for  the  divine 
order  of  society  reflected  in  the  Faerie  Queene  is  that  found  casu- 
ally in  the  historians,  in  passages  where  they  are  not  concerned 
with  its  proof  but  refer  to  it  to  illustrate  or  stress  something  else. 
So  Holinshed  uses  it  (Vol.  in,  p.  1570)  to  blacken  the  wickedness 
of  the  priests,  and  it  is  significant  that  it  falls  in  his  hands  into  the 
same  mould  that  it  takes  in  Spenser's  stanza. 

Wherein  it  is  to  be  wondered  at,  what  legion  of  devils  possessed  them 
that  professing  the  name  of  Christians,  and  linked  with  the  society  of 
Jesus,  they  should  be  so  degenerate  as  to  kicke  against  the  rule  of  Chris- 
tianity, which  teacheth  that  princes  and  potentates  are  to  be  obeied, 
speciallie  sovereigns  and  monarchs,  who  in  their  severall  territories  and 
dominions  are  like  the  sun,  which  is  as  king  among  the  starres,  the  moone 
as  queene,  the  egles  among  birds,  the  lion  among  beasts,  the  whale  in  the 
sea,  the  pike  in  pooles  among  fishes;  finallie,  as  the  heart  in  a  living 
creature,  which  giveth  life  to  the  whole  bodie,  because  it  is  the  fountain  of 
bloud  and  vitall  spirits. 

Of  course,  in  this  passage,  the  writer  was  interested  in  defending 
the  Eoyal  Supremacy,  and  he  altered  the  traditional  idea  to  suit 
his  purpose,  but  he  proves  it  by  the  traditional  appeal  to  the  order 
of  the  creation. 

Spenser's  views  about  "  Justice  distributive,"  as  Elyot  would  call 
it,  were  a  synthesis  of  the  ideas  of  a  host  of  writers,  Catholic  and 
Protestant,  English  and  Continental.  His  introduction  of  them 
into  the  Faerie  Queene  is  explained  by  the  fact  that  they  were 
challenged,  both  in  books  and  action,  in  England  and  on  the  Con- 
tinent, many  times  during  the  sixteenth  century.  Sir  Thomas 
More  was  the  first  to  challenge  them  in  a  book,  the  first  of  a  series 
of  socialist  dreams  clothed  in  a  moral  dignity  and  sublimated  by  a 
religious  sanction  which  are  strange  to  twentieth-century  socialism, 
and  which  unveiled  Utopia,  where  "all  thynges  being  common," 
wonderful  to  relate,  "  everye  man  hath  abundance  of  everye 
thinge."  Englishmen  before  More  had  asked: 

Is  not  this  an  unjust  and  unkinde  publique  weale,  whych  giveth  great 
fees  and  rewardes  to  gentlemen,  as  they  call  them,  and  to  goldsmythes,  and 
to  such  other,  whych  be  either  ydle  persones  or  else  flatterers  and  devysers 

2 


138  •  Spenser  and  Utopia 

of  vayne  pleasures:  And  of  the  contrarie  part  maketh  no  gentle  provision 
for  poore  plowmen,  collars,  labourers,  carters,  yron-smythes,  and  carpen- 
ters: without  whom  no  common  wealths  can  continue.8 

Many  Englishmen  of  his  time  were  agreed  with  More  that  it  was 
impossible  to  "  perceive  aught  but  a  certein  conspiracy  of  riche  men 
procuring  their  owne  commodities  under  the  name  and  title  of  the 
commen  wealth,"  but  he  was  the  first  seriously  to  suggest 

...  all  things  would  reduce  unto  equality. 

Communism  was  a  more  vivid  and  tempting  idea  to  the  sixteenth 
century  than  we  can  well  understand  in  the  twentieth.  To  us,  if 
it  is  desirable  at  all,  it  is  a  far-off,  divine  event,  the  goal  of  an 
evolution  of  which  our  vacillating  belief  in  progress  is  hardly 
strong  enough  to  assure  us.  For  us  it  has  all  the  terrors  of  an 
experiment  untried  and  lacking  the  sanction  of  authority.  To  the 
sixteenth  century  it  was  the  acknowledged  natural  state  of  man, 
from  which  he  had  fallen  after  having  once  proved  it,  and  to  which 
it  was  God's  will  that  he  should  strive,  individually  at  least,  to  be 
worthy  to  return.  The  newly  explored  mythology  confirmed  the 
Christian  belief  in  a  past  age  of  gold.  You  might  read  of  it 
authentically  in  any  author.  North  gave  a  chapter  to  "  the  golden 
age  in  times  past  and  the  worldly  miseries  which  we  have  at  this 
„  present"  (Diall  of  Princes,  Bk.  i,  Cap.  xxi),  and  he  developed 
•  the  idea  in  a  fashion  which  recalls  the  Renaissance  treatment  of 
classical  Arcadian  material  on  one  hand,  and  on  the  other,  the 
hard-headed  British  socialism  of  the  men  who  had  preached  reform 
in  England  since  the  days  when  John  Ball  went  about  demanding, 

W]hen  Adam  delved  and  Eve  span, 
Who  was  then  the  gentleman? 

North  opens  his  chapter  with  a  confident  picture  of  primitive 
happiness : 

In  the  first  age  and  golden  world,  al  lived  in  peace,  eche  man  toke  care 
for  his  owne  landes,  every  one  planted  and  sowed  their  trees  and  corne,  and 
every  one  gathered  his  frutes,  and  cut  his  vynes,  kned  their  bred,  and 
brought  up  their  children,  and  finally  all  lived  by  their  owne  proper  swette 
and  travaile,  so  that  all  lived  without  the  prejudice  and  hurt  of  any  other. 

Spenser  looked  back  to  the  golden  age  with  the  spirit  both  of  an 


8  More,  Utopia,  p.  159. 


Merritt  Y.  Hughes  139 

unquestioning  Christian  and  a  Renaissance  scholar,  and  it  served 
him  as  the  architectonic  idea  of  Book  Five.  Artegall  is  Astraea's 
emissary  to  restore  the  age  of  Saturn,  from  which  the  Book  takes 
its  departure: 

For  during  Saturnes  ancient  raigne  it's  sayd 

That  all  the  world  with  goodnesse  did  abound: 

All  loved  vertue,  no  man  was  afrayd 

Of  force,  ne  fraud  in  wight  was  to  be  found: 

No  warre  was  knowne,  no  dreadfull  trompet's  sound, 

Peace  universall  rayn'd  mongst  men  and  beasts, 

And  all  things  freely  grew  out  of  the  ground : 

Justice  sat  high  ador'd  with  solemne  feasts, 

And  to  all  people  did  divide  her  dread  beheasts. 

From  this  happy  state  men  were  believed  to  have  declined  because 
of  their  wickedness  and  its  primal  curse,  and  it  was  natural  that 
the  great  religious  excitement  of  the  century  should  give  many  a 
hope  that  the  gate  into  that  lost  Eden  was  about  to  reopen.9 

The  hope  of  regaining  the  Eden  of  equality  of  goods  and  privi- 
leges was  certain  to  become  a  revolutionary  force  in  society  if  there 
were  proper  economic  provocation  united  with  a  high  degree  of 
religious  fanaticism.  The  conditions  were  fulfilled  in  south  Ger- 
many and  Tyrol  in  1525  when  the  Peasants'  War  began.  The 
direct  effects  of  that  tragic  outbreak  cannot  have  been  very  great 
in  England,  although  Elizabeth's  anxiety  to  keep  the  realm  clear 
of  Anabaptists  throughout  her  reign  leaves  no  doubt  that  fear  of 
them  and  their  ideas  was  a  bete  noir  of  the  governing  classes. 
They  were  the  Bolshevists  of  their  time.  The  chroniclers,  Camden 
and  Holinshed,  mention  their  doings  in  Amsterdam  and  in  the 
German  cities  with  a  morbid  interest  contrasting  sharply  with  their 
usual  indifference  to  events  abroad,  and  they  mention  the  series 
of  severe  edicts  of  expulsion  against  them  which  began  in  1560  as 
the  most  salutary  and  timely  of  the  Queen's  laws.  The  bands  of 

9  The  Diall  of  Princes  is  full  of  speculations  on  the  loss  of  man's  natural 
state  of  communism.  Bk.  I,  Cap.  30,  explains  property  and  "  lordship  "  as 
results  of  Noah's  tyranny  over  his  sons,  or  of  the  revolt  of  the  five  kings 
against  Chedor  Laomer.  This  seems  to  represent  a  general  idea  that  the 
cause  was  an  event  subsequent  to  the  original  "Fall,"  and  that  the  mis- 
fortune might  therefore  be  repaired  and  that  men  might  return  to  the  state 
in  which  "  all  were  equal  in  commaunding,  and  none  greater  than  other  in 
possessions."  (Cap.  28.) 


140  Spenser  and  Utopia 

German  peasants  who  were  disappointed  in  Luther's  pure  evangely 
of  faith,  and  who  threw  in  their  lot  with  the  newer  gospel  of  love 
and  brotherly  equality  which  found  expresion  in  the  famous 
Twelve  Articles,  were  one  of  the  most  amiable  and  dreadful  swarms 
of  ignorant  idealists  who  have  threatened  society.  Their  excesses 
in  Miinster  and  their  bloody  punishment  made  an  impression  on 
the  imagination  of  Europe  which  was  not  forgotten  for  a  century. 
While  the  obloquy  of  their  destruction  in  the  Peasants'  War 
branded  their  simple  faith  in  community  of  goods  and  a  world 
where  there  would  be  neither  usury  nor  taxation  as  a  vulgar  soph- 
istry, their  martyrdom  did  not  fail  entirely  to  make  an  impression. 
International  movements  of  the  proletariat  were  slower  and  more 
difficult  in  the  sixteenth  century  than  they  are  today,  and  it  is  hard 
to  tell  how  far  the  communistic  ideas  of  the  English  rebels  of  the 
middle  of  that  century  in  England  were  inspired  by  the  memory  of 
the  Peasants'  War.  The  recurrence  of  a  similar  outbreak  in  Eng- 
land was  averted  probably  only  because  the  religious  instincts  of 
the  mob  were  not  seriously  stirred  in  its  sporadic  attempts  at  social 
revolution.  It  was  the  misfortune  of  most  of  the  risings  in  Eng- 
land under  Henry  VIII  and  Edward  VI  to  be  related  to  the  wan- 
ing forces  of  religious  reaction.  From  Catholicism,  as  well  as 
from  the  Queen's  via  media  in  religion,  the  spirit  of  revolution 
could  get  no  support,  and  the  political  overturn  following  the 
Eeformation  in  England  was  postponed  for  a  hundred  years.  When 
the  English  revolution  came  the  discontent  and  "class-conscious- 
ness "  of  the  lower  classes,  which  had  been  so  strong  in  Spenser's 
boyhood,  had  faded,  and  the  changes  wrought  by  the  Common- 
wealth had  very  little  social  significance.  If  the  storm  had  broken 
when  the  memory  of  the  Peasants'  War  was  fresh  the  result  would 
have  been  different.  From  the  suppresion  of  the  Family  of  Love 
in  Miinster  until  after  the  publication  of  the  Faerie  Queene  men 
shuddered  at  the  thought  of  communism.  The  mind  of  Europe 
was  caught  on  a  dilemma.  It  must  be  either  the  preservation  of 
the  existing  order  of  society  sanctioned  by  history  and  by  the 
authority  of  the  Bible,  or  the  levelling  down  of  all  distinctions  of 
rank  and  property;  either  "  degree  "  or  "  equality."  The  imagina- 
tion of  the  time  could  discover  no  third  course. 

At  the  time  of  Spenser's  birth  this  dilemma  had  been  for  three 
years  the  most  pressing  public  question  in  England.  Under  Henry 
VIII  the  objects  of  the  scattered  revolts  had  always  professed  to 


Merritt  Y.  Hughes  141 

be  "onelie  the  defence  and  maintenaunce  of  the  faith  of  Christ, 
and  deliverance  of  holie  Church,  sore  decaied  and  oppressed,"  and 
little  had  been  said  of  the  "  furtherance  of  private  as  well  as  pub- 
like  matters  in  the  realme,  touching  the  wealth  of  the  king's  poore 
subjects."  10  Under  Edward  VI  the  series  of  disturbances  which 
reached  their  climax  in  Ket's  revolt  in  1549  lost  their  conservative 
religious  cast  and  became  social-revolutionary.  They  were  the 
protest  of  the  poor  against  the  "  Enclosures  "  of  the  farms  and 
commons  by  the  landed  gentry  who  found  sheep-raising  more  pro- 
fitable than  the  feudal  dues  paid  by  their  tenants.  The  enclosures 
were  a  betrayal  of  the  duties  owed  to  the  common-wealth,  as  the 
sixteenth  century  understood  it,  and  they  were  a  declaration  of  war 
on  the  commons  by  the  gentles.  The  preambles  to  the  laws  against 
enclosures  beginning  in  Henry's  reign  recognized  the  justice  of  the 
complaint  of  the  villeins  against  their  lords,  and  the  language  of 
the  statutes  made  by  the  Protector  Somerset  almost  excuses  the 
worst  violence  of  the  peasants'  efforts  to  redress  themselves.  The 
pulpit  was  on  the  side  of  the  poor  tenants,  and  Latimer  led  the  way 
in  sermons  which  must  have  aroused  the  bitterest  class-feeling. 
Strype  preserves  some  fragments  of  them  in  a  passage  where  he 
describes  with  his  usual  warmth  the  decay  of  the  towns,  the  expul- 
sion of  the  abbey-tenantry,  and  the  misery  of  the  poor  at  whose 
expense  the  clergy  and  nobles  wantoned  in  luxury.  An  extract 
like  the  following  is  an  interesting  light  on  the  state  of  England's 
social  conscience  in  1548. 

Kich  men  were  never  so  much  estranged  from  Pity  and  Compassion 
towards  the  poor  People,  as  they  be  at  this  present  Time.  They  devour 
the  People  as  it  were  a  Morsel  of  Bread.  ...  If  the  poor  Man  will  not 
satisfy  their  covetous  Desires,  he  is  sure  to  be  molested,  troubled,  and 
disquieted  in  such  Sort,  that  whether  he  will  or  not,  he  shall  forego  (his 
land),  or  else  it  were  as  good  for  him  to  live  among  the  Furies  of  Hell  as 
to  dwell  by  those  rich  Carles  and  covertous  Churles.^1 

After  this  it  was  natural  that  Ket's  followers  in  1549  should 

chieflie  declare  a  spitefull  rancour  and  hatred  conceived  against  all  gentle- 
men, whom  they  maliciouslie  accused  of  inordinat  covetousness,  pride, 
rapine,  extortion,  oppression,  practiced  against  their  tenants  and  other, 
for  which  they  accounted  them,  worthie  of  all  punishment." 


10  Holinshed,  Vol.  in,  p.  942. 

"Quoted  by  Strype,  Memorials  Ecclesiastical,  Vol.  n,  p.  150. 

"  Holinshed,  Vol.  m,  p.  1028. 


142  Spenser  and  Utopia 

Ket  sat  under  the  Eeformation  Tree  on  Household  Heath  with  a 
swarming  army  of  20,000  countrymen  around  him  and  tried  the 
captive  gentlemen  by  scores.  The  peasants  cried  out  for  "  their 
hanging,  although  they  could  yeeld  no  reason,  but  that  they  were 
gentlemen  and  therefore  not  worthie  to  live/' 13  It  was  the  dawn 
of  a  new  social  justice,  and  the  mob  around  Ket  grew  every  hour 
in  the  expectation  that  he  would  fulfill  the  promise  of  Spenser's 
Giant: 

Tyrants  that  make  men  subject  to  their  law, 

I  will  suppress,  that  they  no  more  may  raine: 

And  lordings  curbe,  that  commons  over-aw: 

And  all  the  wealth  of  rich  men  to  the  poore  will  draw.14 

Blind  hatred  of  "gentlemen"  and  radical  doctrinaire  socialism 
marked  the  disturbances  which  were  still  fresh  in  men's  memories 
when  Spenser  was  a  child.  Of  the  class-hatred  the  illustrative 
passages  which  have  been  given  might  be  multiplied  a  hundred 
times.  There  is  less  direct  evidence  of  the  communism  of  these 
movements  for  they  did  not  leave  a  manifesto  like  the  Twelve 
Articles  of  the  Bauernkrieg,  and  indeed,  the  surviving  proclama- 
tions issued  by  the  rebels  in  1549  recognize  the  authority  of  the 
King  and  say  nothing  about  a  socialist  commonwealth,  although 
they  are  very  clear  on  the  score  of  the  gentlemen.  For  evidence 
that  the  peasants  had  a  communistic  object  we  must  turn  to  con- 
temporary historians  and  to  the  pamphlets  which  their  rebellion 
called  forth.  These  leave  no  doubt  that  the  obvious  solution  of 
economic  injustices  which  communism  seems  to  offer  made  as 
strong  an  appeal  to  the  revolutionists  of  the  sixteenth  century  as 
it  does  in  Eussia  at  present.  The  dry  pages  of  Cheke  and  Holin- 
shed  arouse  themselves  to  righteous  indignation  against  a  social 
sophistry  which  Spenser  satirized  in  one  of  the  first  of  his  poems, 
Mother  Hubberds  Tale.  The  Foxe  is  reasoning  with  the  Ape : 

Sithe  then  we  are  free  borne, 
Let  us  all  servile  base  subjection  scorne: 
And  as  we  bee  sonnes  of  the  world  so  wide, 
Let  us  our  fathers  heritage  divide, 
And  chalenge  to  ourselves  our  portions  dew 
Of  all  the  patrimonie,  which  a  few 
Now  hold  in  hugger  mugger  in  their  hand, 


Holinshed,  Vol.  m,  p.  1031.  "Faerie  Queene,  Bk.  v,  ii,  38. 


Merritt  Y.  Hughes  143 

And  all  the  rest  doo  rob  of  good  and  land. 

For  now  a  few  have  all,  and  all  have  nought, 

Yet  all  be  brethren  ylike  dearly  bought. 

There  is  no  right  in  this  partition, 

Ne  was  it  so  by  institution 

Ordained  first,  ne  by  the  law  of  Nature, 

But  that  she  gave  like  blessing  to  each  creature, 

As  well  of  worldly  livelode  as  of  life, 

That  there  might  be  no  difference  nor  strife, 

Nor  aught  called  mine  or  thine:  thrice  happie  then 

Was  the  condition  of  mortall  men 

That  was   the   golden   age  of   Saturne   old. 

Mother  Hubberds  Tale  and  the  second  canto  of  Book  Five  of  the 
Faerie  Queene  are  at  the  hither  end  of  a  line  of  political  tracts 
issued  against  the  seditionists  of  Edward  VFs  reign  and  their 
doctrines.  The  most  important  of  these  was  Sir  John  Cheke's 
"  The  Hurt  of  Sedition,  how  grievous  it  is  to  a  Commonwealth  " 
or  "  The  True  Subject  to  the  Kebel,"  which  appeared  about  1550 
and  is  preserved  entire  on  the  pages  of  Holinshed  and  in  part  in 
Strype's  Memorials.  The  disturbances  died  down  with  Elizabeth's 
accession  and  the  subject  passed  from  pamphlets  into  literature. 
Sidney  introduces  us  to  it  in  the  fifth  chapter  of  the  Arcadia,  when 
Kalendar  hears  that  his  son  has  been  captured  in  battle  by  the 
Helots  and 

that  the  hate  of  those  paysaunts  conceaved  against  all  Gentlemen  was 
suche,  that  everye  houre  hee  was  to  looke  for  nothing  but  some  cruell 
death:  which  hetherunto  had  onely  beene  delayed  by  the  Captaines  vehe- 
ment dealing  for  him. 

Presently  the  rebels  make  their  captive,  Pyrochles,  their  captain, 
"  God  wott,  little  prowde  of  that  dignitie,"  for  noble  blood  and 
noble  rank  cannot  remain  long  separated  with  Sidney.  In  Book  II 
of  the  Arcadia  he  resumes  the  subject  of  the  peasant  revolt  and 
tells  a  story  which  resembles  Spenser's  account  in  the  Fifth  Book 
of  the  Faerie  Queene  in  the  contempt  he  shows  for  the  common 
people,  and  in  their  easy  defeat  by  Zelmane,  Basilius,  and  Dorus, 
who  makes  a  great  slaughter  among  them  with  a  sheep-hook,  as 
Talus  does  with  his  flail  in  the  later  version  of  the  story.  There 
is  more  realism  in  Sidney's  fight  than  there  is  in  Spenser's,  and 
the  savage  joke  of  the  painter  who  lost  his  hands  in  the  fray  is 
unlike  the  spirit  of  Spenser  in  the  Faerie  Queene  although  it  has 
parallels  enough  in  the  "  Present  State  of  Ireland." 


144  Spenser  and  Utopia 

Sidney's  cynical  account  of  the  confused  objects  of  his  rebel 
peasants  shows  that  he  was  thinking  of  recent  events  in  England 
and  on  the  Continent,  and  also  that  his  mind  was  full  of  classical 
treatments  of  such  scenes  as  he  was  painting.  Homer's  mobs  like 
swarms  of  bees  and  Agrippa's  Fable  were  in  his  thoughts.  He 
wrote: 

.  .  .  when  they  began  to  talke  of  their  grieves,  never  Bees  made  such  a 
confused  humming:  the  towne  dwellers  demanding  putting  downe  of 
imposts:  the  country  felowes  laying  out  of  common  .  .  .  Al  cried  out  to 
have  new  councellors:  but  when  they  should  think  of  any  new,  they  liked 
them  as  well  as  any  other,  that  they  could  remember,  especially  they  would 
have  the  treasure  so  looked  unto,  as  that  he  should  never  neede  to  take 
any  more  subsudies.  At  length  they  fell  to  direct  contrarieties.  For  the 
Artisans,  they  would  have  Corne  and  Wine  set  at  a  lower  price,  and  bound 
to  be  kept  so  still:  the  plowmen,  vine-laborers,  and  farmers  would  none  of 
that.  The  countrimen  demanded  that  every  man  might  be  free  in  the  chief 
townes:  that  could  not  the  Burgesses  like  of.  The  peasants  would  have 
the  Gentlemen  destroied,  the  Citizens  (especially  such  as  Cookes,  Barbers, 
and  those  that  lived  most  on  Gentlemen)  would  but  have  them  reformed.15 

Spenser  was  only  following  suit  when  he  wrote: 

Therefore  the  vulgar  did  about  him  flocke, 
And  cluster  thicke  unto  his  leasing  vaine, 
Like  foolish  flies  about  an  hony  crocke, 
In  hope  by  him  great  benefite  to  gaine, 
And  uncontrolled  freedome  to  obtaine. 

The  relation  between  Spenser's  ideas  in  Book  Five  of  the  Faerie 
Queene  and  the  mass  of  floating  conservative  opinion  about  the 
social  order  which  is  reflected  in  the  books  of  Elyot,  Tyndall, 
North,  Cheke,  and  Sidney  which  have  been  mentioned  illustrates 
the  extent  to  which  he  was  indebted  in  this  passage,  as  he  was  in 
all  that  he  wrote,  to  the  spirit  of  his  time  and  to  literary  traditions 
of  the  past.  He  was  not  speaking  merely  as  a  Calvinist,  although 
it  happened  that  Calvin,  and,  for  that  matter,  Luther  too,  professed 
the  same  political  principles  and  exerted  themselves  in  their  de- 
fence. At  heart  in  this,  as  in  some  other  passages,  Spenser  was 
really  closer  to  the  Eoman  faith  which  he  abhorred  than  he  was  to 
the  Protestantism  which  he  professed. 

The  second  canto  of  Book  Mve  is  a  partisan  pamphlet.  It  tells 
only  one  side  of  the  dispute  between  gentles  and  commons.  For 

15  Arcadia,  p.  217. 


Merritt  Y.  Hughes  145 

the  other  side  we  must  turn  to  the  old  historians  and  divines. 
Spenser's  choice  of  sides,  and  his  introduction  of  this  material  into 
the  poem,  leave  no  doubt  of  his  feeling  toward  democracy  as  we 
understand  it  today.  Whitman's  "  dignity  of  the  common  people  " 
would  have  been  unthinkable  to  him.  The  modern  conception  of 
the  betterment  and  self-expression  of  the  people  collectively  would 
have  aroused  his  scorn  and  the  idea  that  they  should  participate  in 
government  would  have  stirred  his  laughter.  His  mind  was,  as 
Mr.  Cory  has  put  it,  conservative  and  "  institutional."  He  was  an 
aristocrat,  and  he  reserved  the  worst  vials  of  his  wrath,  as  Shak- 
spere  did  for  the  demagogues,  Brutus  and  Sicinius,  in  Coriolanus, 
for  Utopian  ideals  and  idealists.  Spenser  showed  himself  demo- 
cratic in  recognizing  that  gentle  virtues  sometimes  spring  in  vul- 
gar soil;  and  in  keeping  his  eye  steadily  upon  the  essential  human 
equality  from  which  differences  in  blood  and  rank  cannot  emanci- 
pate; but  for  democracy  and  for  socialism  in  any  of  its  varieties 
he  took  more  particular  pains  than  any  other  Elizabethan  writer  to 
let  us  know  that  he  entertained  no  sympathy  at  all. 

With  this  conclusion  the  paper  properly  ends,  but  it  may  be  of 
interest  to  suggest  a  possible  definite  historical  allegory  in  the  story 
of  the  Giant  whom  Artegall  overthrows.  It  lies  in  the  rebellion 
already  mentioned  which  had  its  centre  in  Norwich  in  1549.  The 
parallel  between  the  events  at  Norwich  and  those  at  Miinster, 
which  have  been  pointed  to  as  likely  to  have  been  in  Spenser's  eye, 
is  close  enough  in  a  general  way  to  let  either  serve  as  inspiration 
for  the  passage.  Probably  Spenser  was  writing  without  a  very 
definite  slant  on  history.  The  rebels  in  1549,  like  those  in  the 
Faerie  Queene,  were  led  by  a  specious  man  of  straw,  John  Ket,  who 
promised  a  Utopian  reformation.  Ket,  like  the  Giant,  was  over- 
thrown at  the  very  beginning  of  the  armed  struggle,  but  only  after 
a  long  and  formal  debate  with  the  representative  of  authority,  and 
his  people  were  cut  to  pieces  in  a  terrible  slaughter  by  a  large  force 
of  Swiss  and  Italians.  Holinshed  writes  that  "  Norreie,  king  at 
armes,"  offered  the  Marquis  of  Northampton's  pardon  to  the  rebels 
in  the  city  and  pleaded  with  them  to  adopt  sane  counsels.  A  man 
named  Flotman  came  forward  as  their  herald  and 

utterlie  refused  the  kings  pardon,  and  told  Norreie  certeinely  that  they 
would  either  restore  the  Common-wealth  from  decaie,  into  which  it  was 
fallen,  being  oppressed  through  the  covetousnesse  and  tyrannic  of  the 
gentlemen:  either  else  would  they  like  men  die  in  the  quarrell. 


146  Spenser  and  Utopia 

Then  the  mercenaries  were  set  upon  them  and  they  died,  but  hardly 
like  men,  if  the  chronicler  is  to  be  trusted. 

The  parallel  between  the  foreign  troops  and  Talus  is  on  the 
surface.  The  Iron  Man  embodied  Spenser's  memories  of  the  little 
bands  of  English  men-at-arms  in  Ireland  but  he  also  represented 
the  avengers  of  lawlessness  universally.  Ultimately,  perhaps,  he 
typifies  the  violence  with  which  nature  rights  the  gross  wrongs  of 
history.  In  a  passage  discussing  the  fancy  and  the  imagination 
Coleridge  mentions  Talus  as  an  example  of  Spenser's  poetic  powers 
at  their  best.  He  writes : 

He  has  an  imaginative  fancy,  but  he  has  not  imagination,  in  kind  or 
degree,  as  Shakspere  or  Marlowe  have;  the  boldest  effort  of  his  powers  in 
this  way  is  the  character  of  Talus. 

De  Vere  and  DeSelincourt  have  written  of  Talus  in  a  similar  spirit 
of  praise.  DeSelincourt  says: 

By  his  (ArtegalFs)  side  he  sets  Talus,  the  iron  man,  the  most  powerful 
embodiment  of  Justice  in  the  abstract.  In  Sir  Artegall  and  his  remorseless 
squire  the  different  types  of  allegory  are  seen  at  once  in  their  best  contrast 
and  in  perfect  harmony. 

Talus  is  undoubtedly  one  of  the  most  satisfactory  inventions  in  the 
whole  allegory.  He  is  more  convincing  and  significant  than  any 
of  the  other  companions  of  the  Knights  errant  except  Una,  and  he 
probably  stood  very  definitely  for  the  iron  soldiers  who  avenged  the 
cause  of  Justice  in  Spenser's  time  and  for  the  principle  which  lay 
behind  their  existence  in  society.  He  answered  also  to  a  sense  of 
fitness  which  we  still  feel  in  these  matters  and  which  North  phrased 
definitely  for  his  age  in  a  passage  in  the  "  Diall " : 

We  ordeine  and  commaund,  that  the  prince  do  not  onely  not  kill  with  his 
hands,  but  also  that  he  doo  not  see  them  do  justice  with  his  eyes.  For 
how  muche  noble  and  worthie  a  thing  it  is,  before  the  presence  of  a  prince, 
that  all  should  receive  honour:  so  sclaunderous  a  thing  it  is  that  any  in 
his  presence  should  loose  their  lyves. 

Boston  University. 


—  " 


LOAN  OEPT 


14123 


